29 October 2006

"Freemium", Server Based Computing, and “TANSTAAFL”

TANSTAAFL is the acronym for "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." A book by the same name was included on the mandatory reading list for my Economics 101 class. “Freemium” is the concatenation of “Free” and “Premium”. The basic service is free with extensions, add ons or ancillary products available with a “Premium” fee. “Freemium” as an economic concept does not break new ground. Someone is going to pay.

The good news is sometimes that someone will be someone else. If all you need is what the service/product provider is offering for free, then FREE is good. Googles' word processor and spreadsheet is an example. They have a minimum tool set, but for some users these applications meet all of their requirements. For others, maybe not all of their requirements are meet, but with a price of “Free”, the applications are good enough!

So who pays? Those that want more than what is offered for free. The threshold for willingness to pay for additional products/services is lower for premium add ons in this model because the basic product/service is known to work as “Free”. How many of us have paid “Premium” for a product that did not, when delivered, provide even the basics that it advertised?

Adobe Reader may be another example. The reader is free, but the writer/creator application is available for a fee. The web site counter, Active Meter, at the bottom of the left column in this blog is free. Works good and is all I need. If I need more, the company can provide additional services.

There is also another side to “Freemium” that I have not seen mentioned. “Freemium” denies revenue to other enterprises that charge for a similar service or product. Revenue and its cousin “Profit” are the agents that sustain and grow an enterprise. Reduced revenue to the enterprise will eventually translate to into a reduced ability to sustain currently operating procedures. Denied revenue for a product/service that was heretofore a source of fuel to drive the enterprises, they must adapt to remain competitive.

Server Based Computing has the equivalent of Google Docs and Adobe Reader with Edubuntu 6.10. Edubuntu is the education product member of Canonicals' suite including Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Edubuntu.

Downloaded the latest release Edubuntu 6.10 (install version) to see just how far the product has come over the past year. Without additional configuration other then the basic install, “it just worked”! After the installation was complete, I pressed the start button on my thin client (Devon IT NTA 6020A) and it PXE booted into the Edubuntu Server. Just to make sure it was really this easy I went over to the server and launched the Student Control Panel. There I was, listed as a student with my session “Curriculum Vitae”. Could not resist sending myself a message to the student session “hello brave new world”. And not a command line in sight.

Until the next post

Steve

13 October 2006

Could successful software anti piracy campaigns in China and India spawn new Server Based Computing development?

An AP wire service article posted on Wired.com gave me pause to ponder.


Piracy Zaps China's Tech Industry

Associated Press 10:15 AM Jul, 02, 2006

BEIJING -- Kingsoft Corporation's English-Chinese dictionary program is used on most of China's 60 million PCs. That's the good news. The bad news: Kingsoft doesn't make any money from it, because 90 percent of those copies are pirated.


One by one, the Beijing-based software maker has seen its sales of such popular products destroyed after black market producers flooded the market with cheap copies.

Today, Kingsoft's 600 programmers focus on making what it hopes can't be copied -- online games and business and anti-virus programs that have to be linked to its own computers in order to function.

"Piracy has had a big impact on us, making it so we can't get powerful and compete with Microsoft," said Ren Jian, a former Microsoft manager who is Kingsoft's chief operating officer.
India is also recognizing the constraints on software development imposed by piracy. The Times of India reports;

“Piracy eating into profits of IT firms”

by Sujata Dutta Sachdeva [ 1 Oct, 2006 0006 hrs ]


NEW DELHI: India's IT success makes great copy. Especially when it's about big players and the global footprints they have left behind.

But behind this happy picture lingers a dark side too. It involves small and medium companies, especially in the product development space. These firms are losing revenue because of piracy and weak enforcement of copyright laws in India.....

A recent study by Business Software Alliance (BSA)-IDC reveals piracy is as high as 72% in India. In fact, our software industry is losing around $566 m because of it. It's a growing problem among businesses internationally, but the good news is that it's coming down steadily in India over the last 10 years.
One perspective is that Linux on the desktop may be a viable solution. Posted on Byte.com;

China's Linux Gamble

By Maria Trombly
September 5, 2005

On virtually any street in Shanghai or Beijing, you can buy a Hollywood DVD or hot new CD for $1 or less. Vendors peddle Microsoft Office, Windows XP, and every other popular software applications out of cardboard boxes jammed full of discs....

According to Jones Day intellectual property rights lawyer Xiang Wang, the Chinese case law on many aspects of intellectual property rights is not yet well developed, and cases can take years to settle. The Business Software Alliance a trade group including software giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and IBM alleges that 90 percent of all software used in China is pirated and that software vendors suffered $3.5 billion in losses last year due to Chinese piracy.

The Chinese government has started to realize that this is an obstacle to economic development. And if anybody pays attention to economic development these days, it's China. Now, China is beginning to look at open source software as a way out of the intellectual property quagmire that doesn't involve paying high costs.

Linux is a keystone in this strategy.
The AP reports;
President Hu Jintao called attention to piracy's cost to China in a May 27 speech to Communist Party officials. Enforcement "is an urgent need for ... enhancing the country's core competitiveness," Hu said.

"We should strengthen our law enforcement and lawfully and severely crack down on and effectively curb law-breaking and criminal acts of violating intellectual property rights," he said.

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October 20, 2005 Update Headline

MSNBC.MSN.COM has posted an Asscociated Press report;
China jails 9 in anti-piracy crackdown
Prison terms up to 13 years, fines for illegal movies, software
Updated: 7:56 a.m. ET Oct 20, 2006

BEIJING - Nine people convicted of selling illegally copied DVDs and other goods have been jailed for up to 13 years in China's biggest anti-piracy crackdown to date, a news report said Friday.

The sentences were the longest reported since China stepped up penalties for product piracy in mid-2005, imposing jail time in addition to fines that Washington and other governments had complained were inadequate to stop the thriving underground industry.

End of Headline Update
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Lets assume that China, the number two PC market in the would, ships its' personal computer products with a legal copy of an operating system. Good. But what about applications?

Kingsoft, the software maker, aspired to be the "Microsoft of China," but was forced by piracy to stop selling games, a media player and other mass-market programs. Ren, the COO, says the consumer logic is simple: A pirated copy of Kingsoft's Chinese-English dictionary costs one-tenth the $12 price of the real thing.

The onslaught has forced Kingsoft to narrow its product range, with two-thirds of its programmers now working on online role-playing games that players access on Kingsoft's computers for a monthly fee -- part of a thriving Chinese market for online games.


“Necessity is the Mother of Invention” quote has been attributed to Plato, De Vinci, Shakespeare and others. My favorite interpretation is “ Got lemons? Make lemonade!” As captain of your enterprise, do not sail into a nations waters known to have pirates unless the “IPR” (Intellectual Property Rights) coast guard is at sea on patrol. No Coast guard? Then take a land route. In this case Free Open Source Software (FOSS) or one of Server Based Computing offerings.

Microsoft has already in place SAAS (Software As A Service) with SPLA (Service Provider License Agreement).

The Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) enables service providers and ISVs with a hosted offering to license Microsoft products on a monthly basis to provide services and hosted applications to their end customers.

The personal computer has permitted the owner/operator to specify what applications are hosted on their machines. Before the Internet this was an uncomplicated procedure. What was on that machine had to be placed there by someone with direct access to that machine. With the Internet/Intranet that is no longer the case.

Organizations now have software distribution systems that will load software on a PC based on group membership. Enterprises that have a total commitment to respect IPR have teams that their primary role is to keep the organization with the limits of the law.

Knowledgeable individuals are forced to buy and install software whose sole purpose is to keep everyone else from loading software on to their personal computer. Your personal computer is no longer your personal computer if it connected to the Internet. Security is now a major concern for both the individual and organizations.

In the past, organizations have recognized that a combination of SBC hosted applications and local applications represent an effective compromise. Some enterprises, upon review, have concluded that increased use of Server Based Computing has additional merit. And it is not based solely on TCO, but includes security and the ability to rapidly deploy changing IT services to attain a competitive advantage. That review has not been done by most PC centric organizations and individuals. SBC has not reached out to the SME and individuals with quality information that invokes a review of their PC utilization.

Perhaps China and India, influenced by current conditions, can create a Server Based Computing environment for the retail consumer that is safe from pirates on the street and those pirates that roam the Internet.

Until the next post,

Steve

09 October 2006

$100 Laptop May Be at Security Forefront (maybe thin client too?)

Out and about on the “WWW”, I crossed over this article by BRIAN BERGSTEIN AP Technology Writer at several locations. Chron.com has the complete article.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The $100 laptops planned for children around the world might turn out to be as revolutionary for their security measures as for their low-cost economics. The One Laptop Per Child project, a nonprofit begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, aims to improve education by giving children hand-cranked, wireless-enabled portable computers. Governments are to buy the laptops _ beginning in 2007 with up to 7 million machines in Thailand, Nigeria, Brazil and Argentina _ and hand them to kids for them to own..........

Standard computer design generally lets most any program access any file stored anywhere on the machine. That is one reason why flaws in programs can be exploited by outsiders to steal or erase private information.

By contrast, the $100 laptops will force any application to run in "a walled garden" and limit the files it can access, said Ivan Krstic, a software architect at One Laptop Per Child focused on security.

Even if the security were to fail, Krstic believes a specialized encryption technology will prevent the BIOS_ the software that runs a computer when it is initially turned on _ from being overwritten. That means the PC could not be rendered unable to boot up.

"It's essentially unbelievably difficult to do anything to the machine that would cause permanent hardware failure," Krstic said.
More images of OLPC concept devices can be viewed by clicking here.

As background, Ivan Krstic is a contributive author to “The Official Ubuntu Book”. He was also a presenter at Ubuntu Below Zero, LTSP by the Seaway on “Clustering LTSP”. Two of the topics covered were High Availability (HA) and High Performance Computing (HPC) with terminal servers.

How long before a mainstream vendor discovers that a device like OLPC may be a very good thin client as well as secure laptop?

Update 11 November 2006.
Popular Science names OLPC 2006 Grand Award winner for What's New in 2006.
Until the next post,

Steve

01 October 2006

Windows XP on an iPod. Why not!


Sub Title: "
What happens on MojoPac, stays on MojoPac."

Last week I was handed a printout from a web article on MSNBC. I am not easly impressed but this product (MojoPac) has much potential. Throw away the fact that it is version 1. The fit and finish on this product release is very good.

Downloaded and installed the evaluation copy in minutes. Then proceded to load Lotus Smate Suite 9.8.1 (the whole thing), Open Office (the whole thing), and Adobe viewer. I did not use a stop watch, but i percieved that those applications ran quicker under Mojo on the thumb drive. Maybe? Learned how to "Pin" the Microsoft Termainal Server Client to the Start Menu. Works great.


Mobile computing just got more portable.

"Making even the latest pocketbook-sized ultra-mobile personal computers look more like lumbering giants, RingCube Technologies Inc. unveiled software that can virtually squeeze a PC onto an iPod, USB keychain drive, cell phone or any gizmo with digital storage space."

From the Mojo web site more information about Mojo "How does it work?"

Mojo Experience

"Your experience using Mojopac is exactly as if you are using an ultra portable PC (your MojoPac device) and docking it to a computer (the Host PC you are plugged into). Your MojoPac PC is running from your portable device, but it is borrowing the resources (screen, processor, CD/DVD drives, internet connection, printers, etc.) of the Host PC. In other words, MojoPac is your real PC (your applications, settings, data), and any computer it is connected to is being used as a utility to run MojoPac.

Creating a MojoPac PC: Creating a brand new MojoPac PC takes less than 3 minutes. Plug your portable storage device (such as an iPod or a USB Flash or Hard Drive) into any Windows XP PC. Download MojoPac from our website and install it onto the device.

Once you have installed MojoPac, you can log into this MojoPac PC you created (which is running from your portable device), and bring up your newly created MojoPac desktop (MojoView). What you see is similar to a brand new Windows XP PC, and behaves exactly the same.

Using a MojoPac PC: You can plug your MojoPac enabled device to any Windows XP computer (Host PC), and you will immediately be presented with your personal applications, files and environment - and it looks exactly like a standard PC experience. In your MojoPac PC view (MojoView), installing applications is similar to installing applications on any PC - simply load the application installer CD/DVD, or download the application installer from the web and proceed as you would on any normal PC. In fact, in your MojoView, your "C" drive represents your MojoPac device, NOT the Host PC. So applications install in the right place automatically, no extra steps required.

MojoPac lives side-by-side with the Host PC: When you bring up your MojoPac PC after plugging your device into a Host PC, the Host PC will keep running as it was before the connection. You don't need to change the Host PC's settings, install anything on it, or close any of the applications that were running on it. Even more importantly, you can go back and forth between your MojoPac PC view and your Host PC view - you can work on both PCs at the same time, and operate both environments simultaneously. Using your MojoPac toolbar (MojoBar) you can easily toggle back and forth between the host PC view and your MojoPac view. Each presents you with whatever personal preferences and environments you have chosen for that system and MojoPac will never alter the settings or status of the host PC."



The Professional

"You've been lugging that laptop around for so long that one shoulder is now higher than the other. It's time for a smarter way to work.

MojoPac allows you to carry applications and files from your office to your home to a tradeshow in Tokyo on a device that can fit in your pocket. Imagine being able to access your personal versions of Quicken, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Yahoo Messenger by plugging in your iPod to any PC anywhere in the world. Your language settings are stored on your MojoPac - which means you can connect to a Japanese PC and still have all your environment and applications in English!

MojoPac also allows you to keep your home life and your work life separate, but enable to access both at the same time. Take your work with you. You never need to load work applications on your home system again, or worry about data synchronization. MojoPac can keep all your work applications and data completely separated from your home PC's disk drive. And once you remove the MojoPac-enabled device, your home PC will not retain a trace of your work information.

Take your home with you: You can use MojoPac to take your personal applications (multimedia, finance, games, instant message clients, and personal browsing) to work with you, connect to your work PC to run all these apps in the privacy of your MojoPac device, without leaving any trace on your work PC. Nothing will be installed or stored on your work PC, in compliance with your IT policies. What happens on MojoPac, stays on MojoPac.

Recommended devices for The Professional MojoPac: We recommend USB hard drives (1'', 1.8'' or 2.5'' drives) since they provide performance and portability while offering sufficient storage to carry business and personal applications for the Professional. For more in depth overview please visit our Devices for MojoPac page."
Some of the applications you can run on a MojoPac device:

Business and Productivity

Microsoft Office (Microsoft Office 2003 (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Outlook): Enterprise, University, and volume licenses only **
Lotus Notes 6.5.3
Acrobat Reader 7
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5
Quicken 2007
Open Office 2.0
Adobe Photoshop CS2: Enterprise, University and volume licenses only **

and Microsoft Remote Desktop- RDP Client

You can "pin" the RDP client to the start menu. I checked to make sure that when show local desktop drives is selected that the "Host" machine drives were not available. Indeed only Terminal Server displays the valid Mojo drives. Nothing on the PC hosting the client is visable.

Want more information then visit Mojopac.com. They have more detailed information about "What is Mojo", "How does it work?", "Who is it for?" and how to download and install a 30 day evaluation version.

October 10 update. Here is a link to iPod Linux. Why not?

Until the next post,


Steve